“Marta? She sure is a looker,” Evans said.
One of the other fishermen standing around the coffeepot chuckled knowingly. “I hear old Carl was sorry to see her go.”
At ten o’clock, the retirees moved in to talk about the weather and their neighbors, who had money or needed some, whose kids were in trouble, who had a grudge or a wandering eye. Jack sipped his coffee, listened, volunteered the occasional comment or reassurance.
He wasn’t avoiding Lauren, he told himself as he said his good-byes and headed back to his marked SUV.
But maybe the interruption last night had been a good thing.
He drove back to the station house. The coffee in his to-go cup left a bitter taste in his mouth.
In the heat of the moment—Lauren, hot and slippery under him, wet and tight, gasping his name—a guy could be forgiven for losing his head. Especially when he hadn’t gotten laid in... He calculated the months.Way too long.
Being married to another cop, he’d tried to preserve some semblance of a regular personal life, to compartmentalize work and home, to separate sex and the job. And on the island, he was never off the job.
Jack knew cops who turned every call into a fucking opportunity. Badge bunnies, hot for anybody packing, druggies desperate to escape a charge, bored stay-at-homes who answered the door in nighties or nothing at all... There were guys who sampled whatever was on offer and bragged about it after.
Not Jack. He was traditional, like his pop.Old-fashioned, Renee had called him, first affectionately and finally... Well, there hadn’t been much affection there at the end.
So this thing with Lauren, this, what had she called it, rebound relationship, this singeing hot, rock-his-fucking-world sex with a woman he’d met a week ago, wasn’t him.
But, Jesus, when he was with her, when he was in her, when she looked up at him with those dark, perceptive eyes and yielded and trembled and came, again and again, it sure felt like him.
He shook his head. Shook himself. So, yeah. Time to take a step back. Slow things down.
The rest of his day was taken up with the usual end-of-week hassles, fender benders, lost dogs, lost keys, an altercation at the water park, a complaint about parked cars blocking a beach access.
Marta, the new dispatcher, logged the complaints, soothed the callers, handled permits for parties and fires on the beach. He was glad he’d hired her, despite the fact that she and Hank had taken to bickering in the office like an old married couple.
By the time Jack hunt-and-pecked his way through the last report, set calls to go to his cell phone, and got back to his boat, the sky over the water was turning pink.
He needed a long hot shower and a tall cold beer to rinse away the stink of the day. Then maybe he’d have the distance he needed to deal with Lauren.Job here, sex there, everything in place, everything under control.
Or almost under control.
He opened the cabin door. The gray tabby cat shot from the galley counter, claws scrambling on the laminate, and dived under the table.
Jack sighed. At least it hadn’t peed everywhere. The shelter volunteer had explained that the kitten would use the litter box instinctively to hide its scent from other predators. She hadn’t warned him about the climbing. Or told him that his new boat companion would scuttle under the furniture like a cockroach every time Jack walked into a room.
Ignoring the cat, he stripped off his shirt and secured his weapon and utility belt in the onboard locker.
The water beating on his neck relaxed him. It didn’t take much imagination to summon Lauren into the shower with him, her dark hair wet around her shoulders, her pretty breasts pebbled with drops, that intriguing sparkle against her bare belly...
By the time he strode naked out of the shower and found his phone lit up like a Christmas tree, he was ready for her. Smiling, he picked up his cell phone, prepared to call her back.
CALLERUNKNOWN,read the screen.
And the area code was familiar. He frowned. Very familiar. He pressed to return the call, a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. His cop’s instincts kicking in.
“Jack?” said Renee’s voice.
Too late.
“How’d you get this number?” Jack said and then kicked himself for asking. Renee was a high-ranking police officer on a special security task force. She could get any number she wanted.
“Your mother gave it to my mother.”
That was worse. Ma had vehemently taken her son’s side over that cheatingputtanahe’d married. But their families had grown up together. Their mothers had served together on the parish altar guild for twenty years. If Renee’s mother had asked his mother... Yeah, Ma would have a hard time saying no. But it still stung.
